After The War
by dorian dark
Summary: [ONESHOT] Tonks, Lupin and Harry think about the future  their hopes, fears and anxieties. Rated K for mild language. DH spoilers


Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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**I. Tonks**

_After the war, darling, after the war_

After the war, we'll take him to Italy and slip-slide down the marble streets of Verona and eat sorbet from plastic cups.

After the war, we'll finally get round to sorting out these piles of papers, and you can build a bookshelf for your books, and I might even try to read some of them.

After the war, I'll get Kingsley to help me convince those bastards at Extra-Human Regulation to change their tune.

After the war, we'll have a proper memorial service for Sirius, and tell bittersweet stories into the night, and cry a little for the living and the dead.

After the war, we'll tumble into each other and spend whole days watching the sun arc across the sky.

After the war, we'll have more children, and teach them to fly little broomsticks, and bake cookies the Muggle way and gaze at each other with sticky chocolate smiles.

After the war, we'll go to Berlin and run laughing down into tiled Gothic underground stations, and drink smoky cocktails in blue bars, and walk through the Tiergarten under trees older than memories of human loss.

After the war, we'll remember these frantic days and snatched kisses fondly.

After the war, we'll go to weddings and christenings and we won't care that we have no such gilded memories, because we have _now._

After the war, I'll settle on one hair colour and fade to grey in sympathy with you.

After the war, we'll feature prominently in accounts of heady victory, and retreat humbly to a rambling rosy cottage with a crumbling kissing gate.

After the war, we'll take our time to fall in love again.

After the war, we'll be together.

_After the war, darling, after the war_

**II. Remus**

_After the war, oh God, after the war_

After the war, I'll still be greying and scarred within and without.

After the war, we'll be hailed as heroes, but there will be dogged whispers and closing doors to mar our exaltation.

After the war, he'll go off to school in second-hand robes, without a broomstick or a pet or confidence behind which to hide.

After the war, there will be countless promotions for a woman as talented and illustrious as you, and I'll smile and radiate acrid pride.

After the war, there will be muscular heroes and glistening medals to push me into the darkening background.

After the war, the Ministry's gaze will be as harsh and malicious as ever, and I'll miss Severus and his cauldron like the tide with each full, spiteful moon.

After the war, I'll hold your hand, trembling, through each wave of pain and pray this little guiltless child will escape too, that he will not be blighted and scarred.

After the war, I'll remember those hasty words and impulsive embraces in the hospital wing, dazed with Dumbledore's death, and force the taste of regret back to my stomach.

After the war, there will be time for furrowing brows, and unintentional angry words, and mounting bills and cancerous resentment.

After the war, Sirius will still be dead.

After the war, the reconstruction will take long years, and the mourning will destroy our new-found, doomed freedom.

After the war, there will be no escape for us.

After the war, I will watch your love disappear.

_After the war, oh God, after the war _

**III. Harry **

_After the war…_

After the war, there were funerals to organise, and noone to show me how.

After the war, they were all dead or grieving, and there was only a dull void in my mind and grandiose thoughts of salvation and freedom instead of mundane grief and funeral wreaths.

After the war, he was still breast-feeding, and even the jingling, merry-shadowed mobile above his cot could not coax him to oblivious sleep.

After the war, his clothes were new and smelt of faceless department stores, and I wished he was dressed in charity-shop finds bought by his father in defiant apology for his poverty.

After the war, we watched him carefully every full moon, and watched the impassive face of the moon laughing gently at our loss.

After the war, Molly would cry at every photograph, and Andromeda would cry at rainbows and stripy scarves.

After the war, we became adults too soon.

After the war, we articulated death and loss for a boy too young to understand either.

After the war, he asked about his parents, and we told him of a hoarse, gentle voice, and of pretty legs tumbling clumsily, and of fierce friendship and sudden, all-consuming love.

After the war, even Kingsley could not change the prejudiced will that forged such hateful legislation.

After the war, they lay side by side, and time did not threaten their hasty relationship, and I remembered them as beautiful, tragic people.

After the war, we never considered what we would have become if the Dark Lord had won.

After the war, I took meagre solace in their deathly reunion with sadly smiling friends and yearned-for companions, and envied their bliss.

After the war, there were empty years to be filled with grief and regrets, but they remained untouched by time or the monotony of peace.

After the war, there was little space for passion like theirs.

_After the war…_

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AN: thoughts and comments would be most gratefully received. dd xx


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